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Social Imperialism and Wilhelmine Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Ian L. D. Forbes
Ian L. D. Forbes
Affiliation:
Adelaide College of Advanced Education
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Extract

In recent times the historiography of the Wilhelmine Reich has clearly reflected the influence of Eckart Kehr and of later historians who have adopted and developed his work. The Rankean dogma of the Primat der Aussenpolitik (primacy of foreign policy) has been replaced by a new slogan, Primat der Innenpolitik (primacy of domestic policy). The resultant interpretive scheme is by now quite familiar. The social structure of the Bismarckean Reich, it is said, was shaken to its foundations by the impact of industrialization. A growing class of industrialists sought to break the power of the feudal agrarian class, and a rapidly developing proletariat threatened to upset the status quo. The internecine struggle between industrialists and agrarians was dangerous for both and for the state, since the final beneficiary might be the proletariat. Consequently agrarians and industrialists closed their ranks against the common social democrat enemy and sought to tame the proletariat, which had grown restive under the impact of the depression, by means of a Weltpolitik which would obviate the effects of the depression, heal the economy, and vindicate the political system responsible for such impressive achievements. Hans-Ulrich Wehler and others call this diversionary strategy against the proletarian threat social imperialism; and this, it is said, is the domestic policy primarily responsible for Wilhelmine imperialism.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , June 1979 , pp. 331 - 349
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

1 The literature is too extensive to warrant full listing here. Some of it is referred to below. Further, of special interest is Eley, Geoff, ‘Sammlungspolitik, social imperialism and the Navy Law of 1898’, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, 1 (1974), 29–63Google Scholar. Conze, Werner, ‘Die deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft seit 1945: Bedingungen und Ergebnisse’, Historische Zeitschrift, ccv (1977), 21–2Google Scholar, comments on the current reception of this school of thought in West Germany. A recent work which lends support to Conze's comment is Winzen, Peter, Bülows Weltmachtkonzept: Untersuchungen zur Frühphase seiner Auβenpolitik 1897–1901 (Boppard am Rhein, 1977), pp. 20–1, 35–42Google Scholar. For an East German critique of the notion of social imperialism, see Gutsche, Willibald, Zur Imperialismus-Apologie in der BRD (Frankfurt, 1975)Google Scholar. Mommsen, Wolfgang J., Imperialismustheorien: Ein Überblick über die neueren Imperialismusinterpretationen (Göttingen, 1977), pp. 75–9Google Scholar, comments briefly and critically.

2 Mommsen, Wolfgang J., ‘Domestic factors in German foreign policy before 1914’, Central European History, VI (1973), 17Google Scholar ff.

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23 Von Sanden to Waldthausen 19 July 1905, BAK R2/1651.

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41 Ibid. pp. 203 ff.; Blaich, Kartell – und Monopolpolitik, p. 110.

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